Kevin Liu

I am a Ph.D.  Candidate in my final year at the University of Washington Department of Mathematics. My advisor is Sara Billey, and my research interests are primarily in combinatorics, including connections to algebra, optimization, statistics, and probability. You will often find me at the weekly UW Combinatorics and Geometry Seminar, and I am sometimes involved in mentoring for WXML and WDRP.  During the 2022-2023 academic year, I served as a Graduate Student Representative for the UW Mathematics department, where I contributed to removing our written preliminary exams in favor of a writing milestone that better supports the transition into research. For the 2023-2024 academic year, I am the Lead Teaching Assistant for the department.

I completed my B.S. in Secondary Education and Mathematics at Vanderbilt University in 2015, taught high school mathematics at the University School of Nashville from 2015-2018, completed the Post-Baccalaureate Program for Mathematics at Iowa State University in 2019, and completed my M.S. in Mathematics at the University of Washington in 2022.  I am expecting to finish my Ph.D. in Mathematics and my M.S. in Statistics at the University of Washington in 2024, so I am on the job market this year.

I am a proud first-generation college and graduate student. Outside of math, I spend my free time staying active (weightlifting, bouldering, running, hiking, biking, yoga), playing board games, cooking, and learning guitar. During some of my summers as a high school teacher, I worked as a line cook at Fido.